13 October 2004

1. "Turkish soldier killed in explosion blamed on Kurdish rebels", a soldier was killed and two others wounded in eastern Turkey on Tuesday when explosives went off on a road where a group of troops were jogging during morning exercises, Anatolia news agency reported.

2. "French Parliament to discuss Turkey's efforts to join EU", under pressure from its own lawmakers, France's government has said that a parliamentary debate on Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union (EU) would be held this week.

3. "Cyprus threatens to use veto against Turkey", Cyprus has raised the spectre of voting against Turkey when EU leaders gather in December to decide whether to open membership negotiations with Ankara.

4. "Germany Mulls Tanks Sale to Turkey", barely a week after the European Commission recommended initiating membership talks with Turkey, the German government is reportedly considering to deliver tanks to that country.

5. "Syrian Regime Sentence a Kurdish Journalism Student To Three Years In Prison", Journalism student Massoud Hamid was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for allegedly "trying to attach part of Syria's territory to a third country." All he did was to post photos of a peaceful demonstration outside UNICEF headquarters in Damascus on a Kurdish-language site.

6. "Kurds Ready To Fight For Kirkuk", Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said that the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq had a Kurdish "identity" and vowed to fight any force attempting to oppress its people, whether Kurds or other ethnic groups.

1. - AFP - "Turkish soldier killed in explosion blamed on Kurdish rebels":

ANKARA / 12 October 2004

A soldier was killed and two others wounded in eastern Turkey on Tuesday when explosives went off on a road where a group of troops were jogging during morning exercises, Anatolia news agency reported.

Unnamed sources told Anatolia that the blast in the town of Ovacik in Tunceli province was caused either by a mine or some other explosive devise planted by militants from the "terrorist organization," a customary reference for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), now also known as KONGRA-GEL.

Security forces in the region have launched an operation to hunt down the assailants, Anatolia said. The PKK ended a five-year unilateral ceasefire with Ankara on June 1.

Since then, the group has been blamed for a series of attacks on government targets and clashes between the rebels and the army have increased.

The PKK has fought Ankara since 1984 when it took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeastern and eastern regions. The conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives.

2. - The Straits Times - "French Parliament to discuss Turkey's efforts to join EU":

PARIS / 13 October 2004

Under pressure from its own lawmakers, France's government has said that a parliamentary debate on Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union (EU) would be held this week.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has asked that the National Assembly's agenda be amended to allow the debate to take place tomorrow, an official statement said.

Lawmakers from President Jacques Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and from other parties have been pushing for a debate on Turkey's EU aspirations before Dec 17. That is when EU leaders are to finalise an initial approval of membership talks.

The government statement did not say that Parliament will get to vote on the issue after its debate - as many lawmakers want.

UMP lawmaker Dominique Paille said on Monday that about 100 of the governing party's legislators want a vote.

The centrist Union for French Democracy has also called for a vote.

Mr Chirac, however, indicated on Sunday that he is opposed to that.

France's Constitution empowers presidents to negotiate and ratify international treaties, and Mr Chirac said a parliamentary consultation on Turkey must conform 'to the spirit and to the letter of our Constitution'.

Meanwhile, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern yesterday backed Turkey's campaign to join the EU, praising his Turkish counterpart, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as a strong reformer.

'There are some countries in Europe which always get into a sweat about this issue. Ireland is not one of them,' Mr Ahern told a business breakfast while on a one-day visit to Singapore. 'I think Turkey will join.'

Britain's Europe Minister Denis MacShane said on Monday the 'vast majority' of EU countries supported the launch of membership negotiations with Turkey in the first half of next year.

If EU leaders allow membership talks to begin, Germany plans to sell hundreds of heavy Leopard II battle tanks to Turkey in a major change of recent defence policy, two German newspapers said.

3. - EUobserver - "Cyprus threatens to use veto against Turkey":

12 October / byHonor Mahony

Cyprus has raised the spectre of voting against Turkey when EU leaders gather in December to decide whether to open membership negotiations with Ankara.

President Tassos Papadopoulos told Cyprus television on Monday (11 October) that Cyprus reserved the right to use its veto. "We will decide on the matter in December" said Mr Papadopoulos.

He added that he knew that a small country like Cyprus resorting to the veto would be "no easy thing".

German newspaper Die Welt quotes Cypriot diplomats as saying that it would be impossible for Nicosia to accept the opening of EU talks with Ankara so long as it does not recognise one of the 25 member states.

At the moment, Turkey recognises only Turkish Northern Cyprus as a state – and at the same time it refuses to recognise the Republic of Cyprus as a state.

Turkish papers quote Greek president Costis Stefanopoulos as saying that Athens would support Turkey's EU membership but that there were obligations it had to fulfil under international law.

"Under international law, first Turkey needs to recognize Greek Cyprus", said Mr Stefanopoulos.

Turkey wants changes to Commission report

Turkey also has issues on another front.

A spokesperson for the Turkish government on Monday demanded that changes be made to the recently published report by the European Commission on opening EU negotiations with Ankara.

Turkey is objecting both to the phrasing that the negotiations have an open end and to the fact that permanent curbs to the freedom of movement of workers have been suggested.

Debate but no vote in France

Meanwhile, in France, the discussion about Turkey continues to rage.

On Monday, it was decided that French MPs will hold a parliamentary debate on Turkey, but will not vote on the issue.

The debate will take place on Thursday (14 October) and threatens to split many parties, including the ruling UMP party.

Mr Chirac has tried to reassure French voters – hostile to Turkey – by saying that France could apply its veto on Turkey whenever it wanted.

4. - Deutsche Welle - "Germany Mulls Tanks Sale to Turkey":

12 October 2004

Barely a week after the European Commission recommended initiating membership talks with Turkey, the German government is reportedly considering to deliver tanks to that country.

Government officials are mulling the shipment of several hundred Leopard 2 tanks to Turkey, according to the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.

The German defense ministry has denied any such plans, adding that Turkish officials haven't made an official request so far.

But German Defence Minister Peter Struck said last week that the progress Turkey has made on opening negotiations to join the European Union mean arms sales should no longer be a taboo subject.

The Bundeswehr, the German military, no longer needs the tanks, which were built for combat in central Europe's open and flat regions. The vehicles no longer suit the military's new concept of being able to quickly respond to crisis situations abroad.

Five years ago, the proposal to sell the tanks to Turkey already provoked one of the worst conflicts within Germany's ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.

At the time, the then parliamentary leader of the Greens, Kerstin Müller, voiced her party's concerns.

"We think this is the wrong decision," she said. The Greens' resistance eventually blocked the sale of 1,000 Leopard 2 tanks for about €7 billion ($8.6 billion).

Now, the junior coalition partner is once again raising questions about a possible deal with Turkey.

"The European Commission recommends negotiations (with Turkey) and Germany starts talking about tanks," said Claudia Roth, the party's new co-chair, adding that the discussion left a bad taste in her mouth.

No automatic approval

Roth added that she wasn't necessarily opposed to a sale.

But "there's no blank check for a single country in the world -- no EU country, no NATO country," she said, adding that the Commission's recommendation on Turkey did not automatically justify an arms sale.

"Every single application has to be examined and then people will have to make a decision," Roth (photo) said.

Germany had previously rejected arms sales to Turkey because of concerns about the oppression of the country's Kurdish minority. German arms export laws prevent sales to countries in which the arms could increase tensions or conflicts.

5. - Reporters Without Borders - "Syrian Regime Sentence a Kurdish Journalism Student To Three Years In Prison":

11 October 2004

Journalism student Massoud Hamid was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for allegedly "trying to attach part of Syria's territory to a third country." All he did was to post photos of a peaceful demonstration outside UNICEF headquarters in Damascus on a Kurdish-language site.

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the three-year prison sentence imposed yesterday by the state security court on journalism student Massoud Hamid, a member of Syria's Kurdish minority who was found guilty of "belonging to a secret organisation" and "trying to attach part of Syria's territory to a third country."

Calling for his immediate release, the organisation said "the trial was completely unwarranted as he was just exercising his right to circulate information freely on the Internet." Hamid has already spent more than 14 months in prison,

"The severity of the sentence shows the Syrian authorities want to gag the press in flagrant violation of the international treaties they have signed," Reporters Without Borders added.

Aged 29 and in his second year of journalism school, Hamid was arrested during an exam at Damascus university on 24 July 2003, a month after posting photographs of a peaceful Kurdish demonstration outside UNICEF headquarters in Damascus on www.amude.com, a Kurdish-language site based in Germany. The demonstrators were demanding respect for the civil and political rights of Syria's Kurdish population. Following his arrest, Hamid was detained in Adra prison near Damascus where he was reportedly subjected to mistreatment.

Internet access is limited to a privileged minority in Syria. The authorities filter online content and monitor e-mail closely. At least one other person is currently in prison for posting information online or just e-mailing content taken from a banned site.

6. - AFP - "Kurds Ready To Fight For Kirkuk":

ANKARA / 12 October 2004

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said that the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq had a Kurdish "identity" and vowed to fight any force attempting to oppress its people, whether Kurds or other ethnic groups.

Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), was speaking after talks in Ankara with Turkish leaders, who are worried that the Iraqi Kurds are plotting to take control of the city, which also has a large population of Turkmens, a community with Turkish roots.

"If anyone, if any regime or system wants to continue the Arabization or oppression of the people of Kirkuk, we will defend their rights and we are ready to fight for them," Barzani told AFP through an interpreter.

He said the Iraqi Kurds would defend not only the Kurdish people of Kirkuk but "any other group or minority" in the city.

The Iraqi Kurds say Kirkuk was overwhelmingly Kurdish in the 1950s before Baghdad started a deliberate campaign of "Arabization," during which thousands of Arabs were encouraged to settle in the city.

Many also demand that Kirkuk be made the capital of an independent Kurdish state.

The Iraqi Kurdish leadership, however, says that city should be incorporated in an enlarged autonomous Kurdish region but reject the idea of independence, knowing it would be unacceptable to Turkey and other neighbors.

Ankara has repeatedly warned the Iraqi Kurds against attempts to upset the demography of the region.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul reiterated the warning in their meetings with Barzani on Monday, Turkish diplomats said.

In an apparent bid to placate Ankara, Barzani promised that Iraqi Kurds would work for peaceful co-existence between the ethnic groups of Kirkuk.

"Our position is that the identity of Kirkuk is part of Kurdistan. But it is an Iraqi city," he said. "The promotion of co-existence and fraternity (in Kirkuk) has to be a priority for everybody. We are working in that direction."

Ankara fears that Kurdish control of the area's oil resources could further strengthen the Iraqi Kurds whom it suspects of plotting to break away from Baghdad.

Such a prospect, Ankara worries, could fan separatist sentiment among its own restive Kurds in southeast Turkey.

"Kirkuk is a city where all ethnic elements can settle. It is not a place where a certain party can claim control," Erdogan told the Aksam daily in an interview published on Tuesday.

"We are in favor of Iraq's territorial integrity. We are against any ethnic group establishing control over another," he said.

The question of the Kurds' return to Kirkuk has fuelled tensions in the city.

The interim government in Baghdad has so far roundly rejected calls for the expulsion of the Arab settlers.

Barzani said his talks in Ankara confirmed that Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds continued to differ on some issues on the future of Iraq even though they shared the same vision on many others.

"But in general I can say very happily that it was a very positive atmosphere. ... We both agreed that there should be continuous contacts and consultations between us," he said.